The present invention relates to a method of producing excited states of atomic nuclei. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of producing excited states of atomic nuclei, which comprises bombarding atoms with X rays or electrons under specific conditions.
In general, the excited states of atomic nuclei capable of radiating gamma rays or internal conversion electrons may exist usually as doughter nuclei of radioactive nuclides emitting alpha or beta rays. In conventional methods, artificial production of such excited states of atomic nuclei necessitated the use of large scale apparatus and factories such as a nuclear reactor and other incidental large equipment for preparing radioactive nuclides. It is also possible to produce the excited states of atomic nuclei as residual nuclei by bombarding adequately selected target nuclei with nucleons accelerated by a cyclotron, a Van de Graaff accelerator or the like to cause nuclear reactions. The number of the residual nuclei produced in this method is, however, extremely small and the disadvantage of the necessity to use large apparatus, equipment and production facilities, e.g., factories as in the case of using nuclear reactors, is overcome by the present method.